Classic Internet Response: "I Can Bother As Many People Around Me As I Want To Cuz I Have A Sacred Entitlement

Trying to explain the nature of dicipline.

Dicipline, and especially self dicipline, is not something that you can force through sheer willpower. You have to do useless things to get it. And you can't tell yourself that you're doing it for the sake of dicipline, it doesn't work like that. You have to do things for no reason. And if you find yourself asking: Why am I doing this? you should answer: "I'm doing this unnecessary task because it is unnecessary."

After all, when your boss tells you to do a task that is useless for your work, or you have to learn calculus that you will never, ever use in your adult life, will you have a better time with a brain that is geared towards hating unnecessary things and will feel frustrated over the task, or one that not only is used to dealing with these types of tasks, but can even find meaning in the meaningless, through dicipline.

There's a reason for that, you know. When the body is near death, the brain decides that ultimately, it wants to not die, and so it goes into a special, extremely harmful state where it presses every body on the keyboard and releases as many positive chemicals it can, to try and keep itself awake. What you are doing is effectively the same as huffing gasoline. You are getting high on your body's very last survival mechanism to try and prevent a total organ shutdown. And you enjoy it.

if u starve for long enough u start feeling like ur high sometimes its my fav thing ever

What the hell is going on

Of all the time periods I have played, I have never been more flabbergasted than the 2010's. It's not the most glorious experience I have had - My first invasion of France in 1870 had Ride of the Valkyries playing at the perfect moment, nothing will top that. It's also not the most miserable experience I have had - The first day of the battle of Kursk led to me not being able to sleep, and hallucinating about looping artillery loaders that didn't work. I did not enjoy the 1400's in the first place.

So what the fuck is going on man. There is not a single intuitive system in this period. And I don't even own the DLC yet. Litterally before the game starts it's confusing. Why is there a gender that is shown as being unavailable if you don't have DLC? That's a new low, even for this game. Also, from what I can tell, the other animals are just there to lead up to you playing the "human" game which doesn't have a goal. The 'goals' seems to be a tiny recommendation/quest that tells you what to do, but half the time it's almost exclusively just "survive and recreate" or based around some gimmick that the engine now supports.

I have about 192 thousand years on the game now, and I've finished 2 campaigns, one on Japan and one on South Sudan. I've also played the other, larger economies but never to completion.

So here are my questions, and though they are meant as rambling, feel free to answer them if you want to.

Why do I chronically lack homes? Wait, actually, no, its: Why do my construction companies not turn a profit even if I'm missing like 1200 homes a week? Wait, wait, I got it now, what I'm really asking is: Why the FUCK do my markets have the most chronic, incurable and penetrating case of tectumitis I have ever witnessed in my fucking life? I can build 30, 40, no 60 high density urban spaces in a fucking row, they will all be at full occupancy, I have them on the 3rd method (the one where they live with children but not extended family), and I just look at the housing deficit growing, what the fuck does it all mean!?

What the hell is an 'economic strategy', and why does the game take such fucking pride in relaying the information that the USA's attitude has changed and is now protectionary (previously aloof)? From what I can tell, this changes NOTHING about their behaviour, their liberty desire, or their worth to me, neither as a nation or as a person.

How. The hell. Did they reduce race relations to that. And get away with it. And you know what? I prefer it! I genuinely fucking do. I love the 1840's as much as they next KKK member, or whatever, but being able to just determine overall race relations in an area based on a series of numbers, rather than the horrendously complex musical culture of the last, is nice. No idea if it's a better system if you actually want to minimize the penalties of bad race relations, but a more comprehendable text nonetheless.

How the hell do I manage pollution? I make the carbon capturing places, i bankroll the fucking technologies, i ask for the fucking good news, but they aint coming, chief.

THE ETERNALLY SHRINKING MIDDLE CLASS SYSTEM IS THE BANE OF MY MISERABLE, UNWELCOME EXISTANCE. YOU FUCKERS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT.

The government bonds system is a great way to make me take time out of managing the index funds to make more loans that i at best have a 50/50 chance of paying off without MORE loans? What was the idea behind this mechanic? That I planned out the long term national budget? That I was prepared for the annual expenses of my country?? They jump up and down like a frog on cocaine. It's just an annoyance, forces the player to waste their time constantly fucking sending them to the top of the queue, and serves zero purpose other than that.

And finally, most of all: how. the. fuck. does. the. economy. work. you know what? I dont wanna know. Dont fucking write it. the gdp, the PLC's, the tourists(when there are any), will remain a mystery and i dont ever want to lay eyes on THAT GODFORDAMMED GDP LINE EVER AGAIN.

And this was supposed to be a BUILD-UP DECADE!? What the hell happens in the next one, then?

Somehow, this is the first time i figured out the sigma male community has taken up the stoic name as one of their own.

Good lord above i hope noone thinks ive been preaching sigma male content.

Oi ve.

"How do you do, fellow alligators"

You are owed/entitled to nothing.

An important part of minimizing your own unhappyness is letting go of the idea that you are obligated to recieve, or keep, something. Anything. Epicurus said that "He who is not satisfied with little, is satisfied with nothing". But he's dead now, so I won't just quote him without explanation.

In modern society, more is never enough. Yet we believe that if we just had more, we would be happy. Honestly thinking it over, this probably stems from the fact that most people try to 'achieve' happiness and then maintain it indefinitely. Which, of course, isn't possible. If more was enough, any millionaire would waltz around in eternal bliss, and Elon Musk wouldn't need to micromanage his image to feed his ego.

So if achieving more doesn't make us happy, maybe lowering our threshold for what we consider 'enough' will? Well, for me it certainly removed a lot of misery (Though not all of it - I'm still not brave enough to touch and hold a larger spider in my hand) from my life, without needing any money.

You, reading this right now, almost certainly feel like you are owed something. There's a simple way to check. If you were to lose both your legs, would you be angry? What if you lost the love of your life much too early? Oh, and I'm willing to bet that most people would be angry if their phone was stolen, enough so to let it ruin their day. This misery is because you feel that you are owed your limbs, or partner, or whatever you hold dear. But to who? The universe? It's silly to think that you feel the universe owes you your legs, and that cursing it and being bitter would change it's ways.

And indeed, with time, people who lose limbs return to their regular state of mood. So you might aswell minimize the time between you losing something and accepting your circumstances. Which is to say: You might as well start accepting that you are, on a spiritual level, owed fuckall.

You aren't owed people's appreciation or adoration no matter how good of a person you are.

You aren't owed a good girl just because you're a nice guy who would treat her like a queen (If you find yourself identifying with this one, you should maybe just try not thinking you are owed the affection of others from being a merely decent person)

The only thing I would argue you are entitled to is air. More specifically, you are entitled to breathe in air that isn't filled with Co2. This is because you're genetically designed to panic in such a case, no exceptions. So in that one instance, the harmony of nature is on your side, and you can freely panic to your hearts content.

With all this being said, I am definitely owed a heart and a repost by you. Otherwise you're a bad stoic and will go to stoicism hell (Las Vegas).

The worst part of searching for the meaning of life is accepting it when you find it.

But if you insist, I'll give you a hint: you already know it.

Because they are sure as shit looking at you.

Eyes of the forest. Aspen trees

Learn to get up again.

You will most likely face challenges in life. If not, touché, but for most of us, there will be feats we attempt to undertake, and fail at. Or things that happen which we really didn't want to happen. Or things that don't happen when you really want them to. It is reasonable to assume this is an inevitable fact for all humans.

Because of this, one of the best skills to learn in life is getting back up when life kicks you down.

And it doesn't have to be a major thing. It can be, but major events have the aspect of "wow, this was a major thing, I really need to make a dedicated attempt at moving on" which smaller, more common misfortunes sneakily sidestep. But no matter if a loved one died, or your partner dumped you, or you relapsed, or if you didn't get into your dream academy, you must get back up sooner and later. And most of the time, you will, but training your mind to have a structured framework for getting back up is an incredibly liberating exercise once you get it down.

All of the examples I just mentioned have happened, one way or another, to me throughout my youth, and back then I was not nearly as well-adjusted or happy as I am now. This is not because I grew out of the phase where bad things happened - there's no such thing - but because I learnt to deal with loss, grief and how to get back up after I relapsed. Instead of channeling my emotions into selfhatred, shame, scratches and drunken weekends, I eventually trained myself to get back to where I was after reality kicked me out of flow. (I'll get to the exception in a moment).

I remember the first time it properly happened. I had my first high school exam, and I had done a masterful amount of prepwork... at least by my standards. Seriously, though, I was feeling great about it and actually looking forward to presenting and- I got the lowest passing grade. Now, to put this in context, my whole life I had gotten mid to high grades without putting in any effort, and always been told that if I just put in effort I could make it so much further. I was not even sad when I recieved my grade - not cuz of stoicism, but because I was so genuinely flabberghasted I did not know how to react.

As I went home, my mood gradually decreased, especially as everyone around me kept asking "what went wrong", and I continually had to supress the urge to tell them "Oh I actually put in effort this time, like you said!". But that evening, I had finally gotten to a point where I was mentally capable of comprehending the grade and the entire experience. So I ran it through again, and this time, I asked myself "What went wrong" like everyone around me had done before. And truth is? I don't know what went wrong. Even now, I don't get it. But back then it seemed pretty clear what was gonna happen now. A lifetime spent without effort was rewarded, the first time I really tried I was punished. And yet, the conclusion I came to that evening was "Eh, it was probably a one-time thing", which was an out of character level of maturity for a 15 year old boy with virtually no work discipline to present. And no, to this day I have no idea how or why I came to that conclusion back then, either.

Now, back to the whole "getting back up" thing, you may find after particularly important and/or traumatic events in life that you can't just return to everyday life. Maybe there is a new feeling in your mind that you know you can never get rid of, or maybe a part of "normal" dissapeared completely from your life. In these cases it is more important that ever to have a structure in your mind, so that when one aspect of life comes crashing down, the rest remains intact. You have to be emotionally prepared to adapt, because life doesn't wait for good times to kick you in the nads.

And this, near the end of a very long rant, is probably going to be the only time you will ever see me encourage religious-esque activity. Cuz asking yourself "what does the universe/God/Joe Roagan want me to learn from this" is plain and simply more effective than asking yourself "what can I learn from this" when you're facing something that sucks.

Humans are social creatures. Imagining the personifcation of your inner voice as a friend that wants you to be happy is a tool that shouldn't, but does, work for me. Maybe it will for you, too?

Comparing yourself to others, and why you should do no such thing.

This one will be short and sweet. Don't compare youself to others. Think about it, okay? If you compare yourself to someone else, 2 things can happen.

You think you're worse than that person You think you're better than that person

Now, if you think you're worse than that person in some regard, congratulations! You are now less happy than before the comparison, about something that you cannot do anything about, no less. I mean, sure, you can lie to yourself to make them seem worse than they are, but I don't need to tell you why that isn't very healthy.

However, if you think you are better than that person, one of two things will be the case:

You will feel good about it

You will not care or mind (in which case, why would you even compare yourself to them in the first place if you don't care?)

If you feel good about yourself, that's not great. If you need to be better than someone else to be happy with yourself, that must be because you aren't fundementally at peace with who you are and what your place in the world is.

There is a secret third reason to compare yourself to others, which is healthy, but it requires that you can show some emotional distance from the comparison. This is comparing yourself to someone to see how you can improve yourself as a person, either by doing what they do or letting yourself be inspired by your differences.

If you can do that, great! I can't, personally. So I don't compare myself to others, and you (probably) shouldn't either. Alright, that's all!

Have a nice day!